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Ok this is interesting… I had a client who has several domains like around 12 redirecting to the main website (different URLs) and I didn’t see any problem with that…

40 seems a BIG number to me and it can show a red flag to Google… keeping the Mikes idea in mind why not divide the domains…

Out of 40 domains let’s say use 5 for industry related blog and update them one a month with some quick link building on it.

Other 3 as QnA websites… mostly it will be a UGC data so it won’t increase too much of your work…

Redirect 5 websites on different URLs of the main website….

Use the next 2 domains on a review website… again a UGC so not much work in a long term…

(use c class IPs)

… and the same way divide the domain pointing from one website to different others and optimize them to get traffic from them as well…. Why I think it will be interesting is because it will take you to the safe place and at the same time you will be opening several different channels to attract qualified and targeted traffic to the website…

yep that's the idea make something from it , but a very important factor is that the link to the main domain you put only after they gain a good DA and on different c class and here you have good 40 links that will never go away , don't we all looking for those all the time :)

I would redirect all the domains to the primary domain and make sure they are done via a 301 redirect and then focus your efforts on your main website, if you build out a whole lot of thin content sites they will likely never rank and will be eventually turfed out of the index as they have no authority.

If you focus on the main domain, you can worry about their future use later and just remove the individual redirect on any of these 100 domains when you are ready.

I would redirect all the domains to the primary domain and make sure they are done via a 301 redirect.

Here, if from Primary domain you mean to say the main domain then i might disagree you here because if you are going to redirect tons of website to the main website... this is a clear indication to Google that i am taking all the domains and pointing it to one place so that i can eat as much traffic as possible which is not really a good strategy in Google's eye!

If the whole domain redirect strategy is around brand protection each these domains have no links anyway so no SEO benefit. If you link a whole bunch of misspelt versions they will understand what you are doing and see that's not done for traffic purposes.

I know where you are coming from David but to be honest i don't think Google will look too depth in to it and on the other hand you cannot stop (even your competitors) to build links on your redirected domains... so its better to play safe! (My opinion!)

There's a few ways to look at this.. but it entirely depends on the domains. If they are all brand domains, then you secure your brand names and redirect all traffic to the main domain. If you're aiming at SEO value, then you gain the authority (if there is any) of all the domains that you redirect to the primary.

Why wouldn't you want to redirect 100 domains? Honestly I don't think Google would look at that like a red flag, but again it entirely depends on the domains. If you redirect domains with bad reputation, or former penalties, then you'll automatically inherit the bad reputation. So that can work either way - depends on the domains.

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